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The odds have been stacked against Tyrone Walker making the Green Bay Packers’ roster since the wide receiver was invited to a rookie orientation camp in May as a tryout player.

Doubts about the 5-foot-10, 191-pound Walker are nothing new. He has spent his young life overcoming them.

“If somebody is willing to take enough time. ... It’s easy to write off Tyrone,” said Larry Thienes, who has been a mentor to Walker. “You are like, ‘He’s not big enough,’ or ‘He’s not fast enough.’

“But you don’t know the young man’s heart. If you take time to really give him that chance, he will prove himself. I am dead serious about that. If the Packers keep him, they will not be disappointed. They won’t be disappointed on or off the field.”

Walker, 22, was a kid living in Indianapolis when he met Thienes. Over the next couple years, it was the child who taught the adult more about the world than he knew existed.

Thienes served as a mentor for the Indianapolis Inner City Youth Racing League, which was formed in 2001 when Indianapolis Motor Speedway donated $1,500 to help create a program that offered children in at-risk communities a chance to race soap box cars.

Thienes has been around the sport most of his life, a derby champion himself in 1964.

Thienes has helped more than 300 kids since he joined the program in its second year. Some have broken his heart. Others have made him swell with pride.

None have been quite like Walker, who he considers a second son.

In Walker’s first soap box race in the early 2000s, he crashed his car and took out another. It was a bad start, especially for someone who hates to lose. Maybe that’s why Walker smiles when he talks about how things got better.

Off the track, he dealt with personal turmoil that was either going to make him stronger or derail him.

Walker was raised by his grandmother, Hazel, who was the most important person in his life.

Thienes and his wife picked up Walker one Saturday when he was in eighth grade to bring him and a friend to Kings Island, an amusement park near Cincinnati.

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Walker said goodbye to his grandmother and got into Thienes’ car. About 15 minutes into the ride, Thienes got a phone call from Walker’s aunt, Marguerite Watkins.

She told Thienes that Hazel had suffered a heart attack and died after they left. She instructed Thienes to take Walker to Kings Island and make sure he had a great day.

On the way home, Walker was confused when they drove past his grandmother’s home and instead went to Watkins’ place.

Watkins told her nephew when he arrived. For the first time since he met Walker, Thienes saw the boy cry.

Walker has not cried since that day.

“I was dying,” Walker said. “It crushed me. That was my rock. My grandma and I were in this together. She treated me like I was her kid. She raised me.

“You never expect to go out to an amusement park and come home and they aren’t there anymore. That’s the part that gets me.”

Watkins had put two sons through college. She was about to get another one.

Walker had spent a previous summer living with her. Watkins believes in discipline, which is why Walker hated being there for any extended time when he was younger.

“It got better,” Walker said. “It was an easy adjustment. Me and my auntie have a lot in common. She knew what I was going through.”

Responding to adversity

After he took second in the Soap Box Derby race in 2004, Walker approached Thienes and asked if he could have a car like the other kids. A car that could help him win.

Second was good, but it wasn’t good enough.

Thienes told Walker he would help him build one, but he wouldn’t do it for him.

They started working on the car that fall. It took all winter to complete.

Thienes drove the 20 miles from his home in Fishers, Ind., to pick up Walker almost every Saturday. Walker put more than 200 hours of labor into the car to get it ready for the 2005 Indianapolis Soap Box Derby championship.

The only problem was that the size-13 shoe Walker wears today is the same size he wore then.

A soap box car is not designed for such big feet. Attempting to get his feet into one of the cars while operating the brakes was almost impossible.

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They spent most of their time figuring out how to construct it so he could stop the car. They came up with ways in which he could hit the brake pedal less and less, although it reached the point when Thienes told Walker he’d have to prove he could stop the car or someone else would have to race it.

“Lo and behold, he stopped the car,” Thienes said.

Walker was 14 when he entered the 2005 race, knowing it would be the final time he competed if he lost.

What he didn’t realize was that he wasn’t just racing for himself. African-Americans had not competed much in soap box racing in Indianapolis during the early years of the sport, not because they weren’t allowed to, but because they never felt welcomed.

When Thienes started working with inner-city kids, he had so many of their African-American grandfathers tell him how they dreamed of racing but thought it only was for white kids. They built their own little cars and raced down the same hill he raced on when nobody was around.

“As I began to understand how excluded they felt, it became more obvious that this was important,” Thienes said. “When we first started, everybody wanted to race the inner-city kids because they had an easy win.”

Until Walker and the car he helped build came along.

He won that race in 2005, becoming the first African-American to do so. Another African-American, Lewis Nelson, took first at the local race the next year and finished second at the world championships.

“If you would have asked me if I knew the world, I would have said yes,” Thienes said. “But I have learned so much being a part of his.

“At the very beginning, we had enough kids that you didn’t really single out anybody. A couple of years passed and he’s still there working hard. You gravitate towards someone like that. A kid would race a year or two, and if he didn’t win, they would be done. The only race he won was the last one. He never quit.”

A new challenge

Walker and Thienes don’t disagree much, except perhaps for Walker’s potential future in basketball. He played football and basketball at Cardinal Ritter High School, and as he was getting closer to graduation he wondered which one he should attempt to pursue in college.

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Thienes told him football, because at his size, he missed far too many layups to have success in basketball.

“He’s just talking,” Walker said. “Who doesn’t hit layups?”

Walker did pick football, although he didn’t have many offers. There was one from Illinois State and another from Indiana State.

He attended Illinois State, where he became the school’s all-time leader in receptions (250), yards (3,565) and touchdowns (32) in four seasons.

When Walker didn’t get drafted in April, Thienes took him to dinner and told him he was confident things would work out.

The Packers eventually called, and Walker stood out among the 27 players who earned a tryout with the team. He was one of five who was signed to a contract after the rookie orientation camp.